I worked at an Italian Restaurant chain located in the Silicon Valley, a small company with about 4 locations in the West Valley, the North Valley, and an office on Stevens Creek blvd.

They worked my quite hard and would often seat my tables 15 minutes before my shift started, created an environment that forced the "long term employees" to do their side work off the clock (the short term employees where the ones who did not work of the clock to get their side work done), and made it impossible to take a mid shift break by asking you to do task as you tried to eat (long term employees learned to leave the building during a mid shift break).

I had worked a location for the required 3 months and became eligible to get health insurance but before this event occurred they learned that I am a "Type 1 Diabetic" despite my efforts to hide it from them, I have learned the hard way to keep this information to myself.

One day before I was able to qualify for health insurance I was informed that "things where not working out" and that I was going to be let go BUT if I like I can work at the Formal Restaurant located in the North Valley which I accepted being that any job is better than no job.

I then went to work at the Formal Restaurant and after two weeks there I went the main office and asked about getting health insurance. I was told by an office worker that "since I am working at a different restaurant that my 3 month waiting period had started over from and that I would need to wait another three months to qualify.

The office is one large room and all of the woman in the office stopped what they where doing as soon as they heard my question and I told them my name, and they had the look of "I know and you know this is BS but what are you going to do" on there faces as I was informed of this policy. As I walked out the door I heard something about "get another job" from the women in the office.

It all started at the Company wide National Meeting in Orlando. Marketing Day- they gave us Sales Managers our Quota's for each drug our team sell.

The quota was arguably very high. Problem was the patient population that our drugs treat is not huge, its a small disease-not like, say, Hypertension. In fact if Everyone who had this disease used our drugs 100% of the time we still could not sell enough pills to meet quota.

So we were instructed on how to teach "Probing Skills" to our reps. To "Help and Lead" Physicians use our drugs on people its is not intended to treat. This was not the usual out of indication use that physicians do every day. It was expanded use with no clinical evidence or even medical history!

Many of us were not comfortable with this, of course, and asked our(boss) Director to clarify. So he brought us to a special meeting with his boss-the VP of Sales. He asked us the infamous question all managers have been asked "Are You On Board?" If your not with us.... He mentioned the high number of sales positions open that we could take instead of managing. That we should "think about that and try to refocus our energy on solutions not obstacles."

So I'm ashamed to say I "GOT ON Board". I spun the new "aggressive sales attitude" our company has adopted- to my team.
This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the new sales tactics we began using over the next 2 years.

I have since left that company and started my own business that is doing OK- but I sleep much better!
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I work for a small call center doing calls for a certain credit card company's benefit program.

I had a call

"Thank You for calling *#@$#$#@$* this is Steven how may I assist you today"

/"Hello This is #)$@*)$* and I need to know what my Extended Warranty Covers."

"I'll be happy to assist you with this. In order to bring up your specific card information may I please have your account #"

/"I just need to know whether a refurbished ******* would be covered"

"I can assist you with that may I please get your account #"

/"Listen Sandy I just need the information"

"Sir if I could please get your account # I can provide you with this information"

/"Sandy, Sandy, is it that you don't know the answer to my question or that you don't want to give me that information"

"Sir I do have the information you are inquiring about, however because of *&U*(#&*( security procedures I would need to get your account # in order to give that information"

/"Sandy, what I'm going to do now is call my ******** Customer Service and speak with a supervisor you're going to give them your name and identification and we will go from there. I'm going to cancel my **** card because you won't give me the information."

I was desperate for a job and started working at a place that SEEMED ok at first, but I soon discovered that almost every 3 months exactly they would either fire someone or force someone to quit...often for no reason at all excepted they didn't think the person was a "team player."

The first person to leave was a guy who was there only a couple weeks. He quit claiming issues related to his wife but I think he hated the job.

The next person to go was a temp who ran off to Greece as a college exchange student. Lucky her. She didn't really like the place either.

The next person to go was a guy who was there to replace the other guy who quit...he was fired for not being a "team player" because he stopped working hard after he realized he was being force to do the work of 3 people for 1/2 the pay of one person.

The next person to go was a girl who was hired around the same time as the guy who was supposed to replace the other guy. She quit, claiming she needed to move to stay closer to her boyfriend, but I knew she hated working at our company and thought the company was evil and unfair.

The next person to go was a crazy creepy, bossy person who nobody liked anyway...Again they didn't like her attitude so she was fired.

The next person to go was a guy they hired to replace the girl who quit and the guy who was fired. They claimed he just "didn't get it" and fired him for not being fast or smart enough to work 2 jobs for very poor pay.

The next person to go was again the person who was hired to replace the guy who was hired to replace the first guy. He quit saying the company was unethical, didn't treat their employees right, lied to their customers and were stingy and rude (all of these things turned out to be true).

The next person to go was actually the first person they hired. They forced her to quit, threatening to fire her if she didn't leave. They also claimed she wasn't a "team player" and wasn't there for the right reasons. They said they'd give her a good reference if she quit and when she did leave I overheard them in their office give her a bad reference when someone had just called in to ask them for a job verification for her.

The next person to go was the person they hired to replace the person they hired first as well as the person that they fired who was replacing the other guys who were fired. She quit in anger because they didn't pay her the benefits and pay they had promised and were making her work three jobs at once and would yell at her and treat her poorly.

Finally I quit just before they had announced they were going to lay me off and take the company in a "new direction"

This all happened in the period of 12 months. They started with 3 employees, expanded at one point to 7, and then ended up with zero and had to go out of business after firing 3 people, having 3 walk out on them and 4 quit out of anger or threats of being fired by the company. All this happened because the company didn't want to treat their employees and customers right.

Man was it a trip just sitting back in my office watching all of the fights and firings unfold. And man I feared for my job everyday I was there. Out of respect for my fellow employees I held a F*ck (insert company name here) party where I brought everyone together to celebrate not having to work for the evil company anymore. People who had never worked at the company at the same time got to meet for the first time and everyone had a blast!
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I had a blip in my career when, for some bizarre reason, I decided to become a chef. (Never again - despite my love of cooking it's a job for sadists or masochists.)

I enrolled on a full-time college course for a year to get the basic training. Everything was going well, and all that was required to complete the course was a three week work-placement at an establishment with recognised high standards.

I was "lucky" enough to be accepted by [an international oil company - can't name names here but if you think of crustaceans and sea you might guess]. Their HQ is on The Strand in central London. All very prestigious and I was looking forward to the experience and to learning some new things.

I knew they wouldn't pay me for my placement, but I did think that they might refund my fares. (Travel in London is very expensive and travelling at peak rates costs substantially more than after the rush hour.) Nope, they didn't want to do that. Maybe I wouldn't turn up. I suggested that if I didn't turn up, then they needn't refund the fares. But no, I had to turn up at 7am every morning at my own expense, which was a big drain on our then very limited budget.

Still, I thought it would be worth it as I would learn a lot from the experience.

Yes, I did learn a lot.

I learned how to behave like a whipped dog with all the bullying that went on. To be fair, the more senior chefs were nice guys and were above that sort of behaviour. But the lower ranking ones, those with even one little rank above a trainee, mostly behaved like megalomaniacs. (There were exceptions, of course - two of them were really nice guys.)

I also learned how to cook 1,600 sausages in an hour every day.

And finally, I learned that no matter how well I did on my work placement they would never employ me because they always hired staff via an agency.
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